About This Show

A new play by award-winning playwright-activist Catherine Filloux. Kidnap Road is a theatrical re-imagining of Ingrid Betancourt’s captivity, held hostage from 2002 to 2008 in the Colombian jungle by the FARC.
While Ingrid Betancourt, a former senator and anti-corruption activist, was running for President of Colombia in 2002, she was kidnapped by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, a Marxist revolutionary terrorist organization, better known as FARC. A talk-back follows the reading.
This story is a theatrical imagining based on those events.
The Woman narrates this story, through “intrusive memory,” a symptom of PTSD. She grapples with an ever-present series of moments in her life as the play shifts in time and place via fragmentary scenes in a variety of locations. The long trauma of the Woman’s captivity is propelled by the conclusion to her story, foreshadowed throughout the play. Redolent, repeated phrases guide the audience; and the play’s design includes a detailed soundscape, also making the silences impactful. Throughout the play are the Woman’s meditations on why she made her political choices; and a play-within-a-play film noir twist reveals the Woman’s past with Camus, the theater and existentialism.
The Man shifts kaleidoscopically between roles including: FARC commanders and guards; the Woman’s deceased Father; her Son, who is growing up without her; God, who plays a harmonica; and her lover, a Fellow Hostage.
Performed by Kimber Riddle and Marco Antonio Rodriguez; Directed by Elena Araoz; Production Manager/Stage Manager: Karen Oughtred; Assistant Stage Manager: John-Paul Pelletier.
Kidnap Road will receive its World Premiere production at: First Floor Theatre at La MaMa, April 27 – May 14, 2017